The Dispatch Podcast - Six Months Into Biden's Iran Strategy
Episode Date: August 6, 2021How do you solve a problem like Iran? Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is here to talk with Sarah and Steve about the Biden administration's approach to... Iran after six months in office. Was moving away from the Trump administration's maximum pressure campaign the right move? Show Notes: -Goldberg’s piece in The Dispatch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Welcome back to the dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isgird, joined by Steve Hayes. And this
week, we are talking to Rich Goldberg. He is a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy,
worked on Capitol Hill, the U.S. National Security Council under President Trump, and the governor
of Illinois' chief of staff. He is also a Naval Reserve Intelligence Officer, but perhaps
most importantly, has an incredible piece on Iran on the dispatch website from maximum
pressure to maximum deference.
Let's dive right in.
Rich, thank you so much for joining us.
I want to read just a section of your piece.
The president must face this unpleasant truth.
Iran has vastly expanded its illicit nuclear.
activities on his watch. His policies of maximum deference, not Trump's policies of maximum
pressure, have allowed this. Can we back up a little and just talk about where we are with Iran
and what it means to have maximum pressure or maximum deference? Yeah, absolutely. And thanks for
having me on. So the Trump administration adopted the so-called maximum pressure campaign,
which was the idea that the president would take the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal
and restore the policy that had existed prior to that deal.
We go back to 2013 and before that,
when it was pretty almost unanimous bipartisan consensus in Washington,
that we should continue to impose this maximum pressure of sanctions,
ratcheting up the economic pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran,
the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism,
until they complied with international norms of conduct.
They stopped enriching uranium and threatening that they might acquire nuclear,
weapons in the future to fulfill their stated visions of destroying, wiping Israel off the map,
destroying America, destroying other U.S. allies, that they would stop sponsoring terrorism,
that they would stop taking American citizens hostage, that they would stop starting and fomenting
wars throughout the Middle East. We see their proxies in Yemen. We see their proxies in Syria
and in Lebanon and in Iraq. And so the idea here was the Iran nuclear deal had sort of reversed
that common consensus under the Obama administration. The idea of the nuclear deal was, the theory
from the Obama administration was, we don't think we can ever get Iran to stop sponsoring terrorism.
We can't stop them developing their missiles. We can't stop them fomenting wars in the Middle East.
But maybe we can pay them enough money to at least temporarily pause their nuclear advances,
which we view as the most serious of all their threats to the United States and to national security.
And that's what the deal was, in fact.
It was this temporary set of limits where Iran would temporarily self-constrained itself,
no actual restrictions, just saying we won't do certain things in our nuclear program for a certain number of years.
And in exchange, the United States would pour money into the coffers of the regime by lifting sanctions,
by allowing Iran to repatriate money from around the world that had been trapped under U.S. sanctions,
to trade, to export its oil, to export other goods as well.
to try to attract foreign direct investment.
And of course, underlying this theory is some that hold an ideology that you can still moderate
this regime, that you can somehow reform this regime by bringing it closer to the United
States, bringing it closer to the West through trade and introducing capitalism to the markets.
The fundamental mistake, of course, was that this regime pocketed the cash and took it
to fuel all of its other malign activities, knowing that there were these sunset clocks.
these expiration dates to the deal.
So what if I have to slow down my enrichment for a few years,
not build the advanced centerfuge for a while?
I can still advance my missile program.
I can take the cash to advance my positions throughout the Middle East,
strategically, take positions of strength,
the so-called Shia Ark from Yemen all the way to the Mediterranean and Lebanon.
And then at some point, I'll legitimately, under the deal,
start enriching uranium more and have my clear pathways to nuclear weapons.
in the future and have everything I want. The Trump administration said, this is crazy. We're
completely tied, handcuffed to use any sort of economic coercion tools to stop all these other
malign activities with this countdown clock to when Iran gets to do all these nuclear
misconduct, all these illicit activities anyways. So what is the point of this deal? It's a crazy
deal. And that was the thesis of those who wanted the president to pull out, which he did.
And then he reimposed the U.S. sanctions that had existed prior to the deal, but then started
layering on more and more and more in a so-called maximum pressure. And it wasn't just to get Iran
to stop its nuclear program. It was to say, here is the list of basic elements of conduct that we
expect from a normal country. You don't sponsor terrorism. You don't put your forces to foment
civil wars in other countries. You don't take Americans hostage. You don't build nuclear-capable
missiles. And of course, you don't have illicit nuclear activities that you haven't even told us
about. That's the maximum pressure campaign. What were the results of it? Obviously, we saw
escalation over the last two years. And that's what Democrats and those who support the JCPOA,
the Iran nuclear deal, as we call it, would point to and tell you. Rob Malley, President Joe Biden's
special envoy for Iran, has made a lot of media appearance the last couple of week. And he says,
the reason we're in the position we are today is because of the maximum pressure campaign.
And it was easy to say that in 2019, 2020, because we did see Iran tried to escalate.
They did start having attacks against tankers in the Gulf.
They did start attacking U.S. forces in Iraq.
They were expanding their nuclear program, enriching more and more low-enriched uranium
at higher levels than they were allowed under the nuclear deal.
Obviously knowing at some point they would have been allowed to do it anyways, but they were
speeding up the clock to try to create pressure.
The difference, of course, was that these were tactics to try to create political pressure
in Washington to stop the maximum pressure campaign.
This was trying to say, oh, it's not working.
Give the opponents of Donald Trump some talking points to say, look, things are getting worse,
lift the sanctions, go back to the deal so that Iran can go back to getting everything at
once.
But what we see in the International Monetary Fund data that came out in the spring was that at the
end of 2020, Iran had gone from $122 billion of accessible foreign exchange reserves in 2017
before Donald Trump left the Iran nuclear deal to just $4 billion. Four billion left at the end
of 2020 of accessible foreign exchange reserves. It's unbelievable. And so that's when the shift
happened, though, right? At that moment, right, when Iran is sort of at that tipping point,
where maybe the thesis of the maximum pressure campaign could have been proven out
that the regime would have been forced to choose between managing and overseeing a complete economic collapse
versus simply capitulating to basic normal demands of the international community
and negotiating on U.S. terms over the range of malign activities.
or would, you know, would they go forward without that pressure and be able to say,
okay, well, if the pressure has lifted, why do we have to negotiate?
What do we have the cash back?
And that's what happened as Joe Biden became president.
They opposed the maximum pressure campaign during the campaign.
They said very clearly, as a candidate for president, Joe Biden wrote an op-ed in CNN,
saying, I intend to go back to the nuclear deal. It will be my top priority. We saw statements and
interviews that he gave to the New York Times about his intent to go back to that deal and lift
sanctions. And he appointed his envoy, Rob Malley, to go to Vienna and start indirect talks
with Iran to negotiate that return, offer the regime sanctions relief, and see what it would take
to get back to the deal. The results of what I call the maximum deference campaign, right? That's the
shift for maximum pressure under Trump to maximum deference under Biden are now in. And what we've
seen is continued escalation on all fronts, way beyond what we saw under the Trump administration.
When we were talking about the threat of Iran's expanded enrichment during the Trump administration
in response to maximum pressure, we were still looking at low enriched uranium production.
In January, the regime announced it was going to 20%, which is highly enriched uranium.
uranium, which is more dangerous because it brings them closer to have a stockpile of higher
enriched uranium that could be further enriched to a weapons-grade uranium, which is 90% uranium,
which means the timeline for a nuclear breakout is shortened.
And for years, that 20% marker was a red line for the international community.
We remember Benjamin Netanyahu even going to the UN General Assembly and having that picture,
that cartoonish picture of a bomb with a line.
And for many, many years, the regime never really crossed it.
They came right up to the point of 20%,
but they never crossed it because they knew that was a red line
for the international community.
They came to the line, they crossed the line,
and nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
Our European allies actually went to the International Atomic Energy Agency in March
at their quarterly board meeting and said,
we need to do something.
We have to show force.
We have to show that we're serious,
that we might abandon this nuclear deal, that we might reimpose sanctions ourselves because 20%
is scaring us. This is our red line. And Joe Biden pulled them back. The Biden administration
said, no, we're in the middle of trying to get back to the Iran deal. You can't provoke them.
Can't provoke them. No resolutions at the IAEA, maximum deference. And so what did the regime do
on its nuclear front? It escalated. It went to 60% enrichment, which is where they're at today.
It's crazy. We had years of...
of 20% being the red line, and now they're at 60%,
and the response from the Biden administration
and the international community is nothing.
We went through another board meeting of the IAEA, no resolution.
We have one coming up in September.
No word if there will be one then.
That's on the nuclear front.
On the terrorism front,
we've now seen over the last several weeks
the attacks in the Gulf picking back up.
Now, some of this is a little bit of what you would call,
a tit for tat with Israel. There are sort of clandestine operations that the Israelis are pulling
off both inside of Iran and in Syria with some with some airstrikes. And the Iranians are looking
for ways to strike back. And so they are targeting Israeli connected vessels that are transiting
the Gulf. But they're also deciding to attack other vessels as well that have connections
to U.S. allies like Great Britain.
They're sending a message.
They're sending that they feel that they can threaten
the international community
and not have anything done to them.
No sanctions coming back.
In fact, the position of the White House,
every single time there is one of these provocations,
whether it's an attack on U.S. forces in Iraq,
an attack on a tanker in the Gulf,
is to say, we condemn this
and we remain committed to going back to the JCPOA,
which is to say to the regime,
if you're the supreme leader who's just authorized an attack on the united states oh remember there
was also a plot to kidnap an american journalist out of new york city with fast speed boats going to the
port and and navving her and grabbing her and taking her down to venezuela by boat and then flying her to her
i mean it was like out of a movie and this happened this is a terrorist plot on u.s soil and the response of the
White House was, we remain committed to going back to the JCPOA.
And it's important to note, sorry, just to jump in, it's important to note the Iranian
plotters have been indicted by the Justice Department. This is not like a theoretical plot or
we think they might have been doing this. Like there is an indictment. Yeah, Southern District,
New York put out this lengthy press release, big press conference. I've been told from several
sources, the White House tried to stop DOJ from making a public announcement. They did not want this
out there this time, it contradicts maximum deference. But interestingly, if you look at the
actions that have been in any way provocative against Iran over the last six months, they usually
come from DOJ actions. This indictment's an example. We saw DOJ action to remove websites that the
Iranians owned. You don't see action out of the Treasury Department. Actually, the opposite.
So far, not only have we not enforced any of the economic sanctions that were in place as of January
20th, right? With, we see Chinese imports of Iranian oil skyrocketing, other signals that Iran's
getting access to cash. The Treasury Department actually has loosened its restrictions on the frozen
money that Iran has around the world. State Department issued a waiver just a couple weeks ago up to
Capitol Hill to allow Iran to use its oil revenues that are sitting in these foreign bank accounts to
pay off its foreign debt, right, relieving its balance of payments crisis even further. So that's what
maximum deference is in contrast to maximum pressure. And my point is, you can't go on television
anymore six months into your administration having implemented a maximum deference campaign and
say the reason why Iran's at 60% enrichment, the reason why tankers are being attacked in the
Gulf, the reason why Americans are being attacked in Iraq is because of Donald Trump's
maximum pressure campaign. Now, that may have worked on January 21st. It doesn't work on August 7th,
August 8th, September 11th, October.
This is your administration now.
It's your policies.
You own it.
And I think the president's team needs to come to that realization.
What better time than with the inauguration of Iran's new president select,
the mass murder, the hanging judge of Tehran, Ibrahim Reisi.
Let me, let me ask a, I want to ask a question about the history here.
And I want to try to get you to get.
us an understanding of why they're doing what they're doing. What's interesting to me in reading
your excellent piece this morning on our website, but also following this closely for not just
the past six months, but for the back through the Obama administration, is this deliberate effort
to decouple Iranian regime behavior broadly understood and its nuclear program. And the Obama
administration was quite open about this. That's what they were doing. They were saying,
we are taking everything we know about the nature of the regime, the terrorism, the developing
weapons, the attacks on interests in the region, the fomenting civil wars elsewhere. We have decided
to take all of that and set it aside because we think this nuclear deal is so important.
That struck me at the time as unwise and totally unrealistic. I mean, how do you, how do you sit
down at a negotiating table with out taking into account the nature of the person on the other
side or the entities on the other side. And I guess my first question is, is that, are we just seeing
in the Biden administration's maximum deference campaign a continuation of that? I mean,
there seems to be this clear decoupling ongoing. And then the second question is a little different.
if the why I mean this is not this would not be the policy I would implement if I were president of the
United States but assuming that the Biden administration isn't doing this just to you know
strengthen the Iranian regime what did they what's the most charitable understanding of what
they think they're doing what is Rob O'Malley thinking as he makes these these arguments on
behalf of Biden administration policies so I think there are three
different camps and three ways of looking at the policy, both under Obama and now under
Biden. And I think the policies are very similar. The most charitable view is I had a conversation
back during the Iran deal negotiations when the Obama administration was vigorously opposing a
bipartisan bill from Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey Democrat, Republican, Senator Mark Kirk,
who I used to work for.
And our bill was to threaten prospective sanctions should these talks not lead to a good deal
to set some basic minimum standards of what a good deal on the nuclear front and missile front
should look like and what we would be willing to lift.
And if they couldn't reach those minimum standards, then all the sanctions that they had
temporarily relieved under that interim nuclear deal back in 2013 would come back and then
some.
And the White House saw this as just this potent threat to them.
They went all in, called all the Senators, warmongers.
Remember Huffington Post with 16 saboteurs, 16 Democrats who were co-sponsored in legislation.
This was a big knockdown, drag-out fight.
This was it.
The actual fight over the Iran nuclear deal happened in early 2014.
It didn't happen in 2015, as most people in Congress think.
It was over this bill.
And I called one person who had been in the Obama administration,
first term. It was viewed as you could call them a hawk as you, it's a relative term when you're
in the Obama administration. Let's say it's the Obama administration's hawk. And he'd come out against our bill
in favor of the White House's position. I said, why are you against this bill? Like, this is going to
strengthen diplomacy. This is going to help, you know, Ambassador Wendy Sherman and others who are
actually there at the table say, listen, we would love to do this deal, but Congress is tying our
hands, you have to give us more, right? That's just obvious. Good cop, back up.
And he said, well, my view is that the Supreme Leader might die in a few years.
And he'll probably die within the time frame of the first sunset on the nuclear program
under the deal. And so if we can at least buy ourselves some time, kick the can down the row,
throw some money at them to stop the enrichment so we don't have an actual nuclear Iran on our
watch and then see if the Supreme Leader dies, it will have been working.
it that's interesting perspective uh i don't know i don't know seven seven years seven years later
he's right never happened he's he's alive and kicking and and you know certainly i think if you
look at the the the newly sworn in president um it is an extension of the supreme leader's power
i mean he is fully fully and and we may actually be seeing the transition starting here that
you know this this this may be the transition this may be the next supreme leader who's now who's now
president. You know, we, obviously, we've had for now a decade the reports that
Supreme Leader is about to die of cancer. It's sort of like this great every six-month
report where everybody's like, oh, you know, Supreme Leader might die, so maybe we should do
something different here. But now it actually could happen, though. We've said that 10 years
in a row. The other, so that's a charitable view. The pragmatic view is the President of
United States wants to do a lot of things, and this is an annoyance, and this is not what he
wants to deal with. And if you can pay off the Iranians and just pay the racket and make the
crisis go away for now, even though, yes, you're going to have terrorism, you're going to have
missiles and all the bad things that we know about, yeah, we can manage those things. We've managed
them for years. Yeah, they're getting worse and worse, but we'll still manage them. We can't manage
a nuclear weapon. So just get this off the table because I want to deal with China. I want to deal with
Russia. I want to do, you know, COVID. I want to do other things. Like, why is this taking up my time
during the day. Just make it go away for now. We'll deal with it later. That's another view.
That could be the view of actually Joe Biden in this case. And then there are people who are
just ideologically motivated that they truly believe that it is possible to make Iran a strategic
partner in the region as opposed to an enemy. And that the JCPOA is a strategic realignment
of the region in that fashion. That they're not truly state sponsors of terror.
terrorism. We just called them that for political reasons. Just like Hezbo is not really a terrorist
organization. Hamas is not really. These are political organizations that have been at war with our
allies. And so we've adopted them as enemies as well. This is the view of Rob Malley. That is the
ideology. And he's written about it. He's talked about it. This is not me just throwing things
at him. This is his ideology. At some point, though, if you're Jake Sullivan, right, who's in that more
centrist camp. The president's national security advisor. The president's national security advisor
who recognizes that he does want to have the ability to push back on Iranian terrorism and missile
development and other things, even if you're in some sort of a nuclear arrangement. And he does
recognize the deficiencies of the JCPOA that tied our hands, right? This decoupling you're talking
about, which was a strategic failure, because not only did you not stop the nuclear program long term,
you empowered all the other malign activities while you lifted sanctions.
I think Jake Sullivan realizes that.
And that's where this whole thesis is that we want to negotiate a longer, stronger deal.
We want to address all these deficiencies.
The Biden administration, the difference between the Biden administration and Obama
is that they recognize publicly that the JCPOA was flawed going into their administration.
By saying we need a longer, stronger deal, they're saying this is not a great deal.
Now, when you start looking at what the Obama administration did during the decoupling,
they tried to rhetorically say we will still be able to impose sanctions for non-nuclear reasons, right?
We're lifting nuclear sanctions only.
That was the big sort of sell to Congress.
These are nuclear sanctions.
We reserve the right to impose terrorism, missile, and human rights sanctions, no matter when during the Iran nuclear deal.
And so we lifted all these sanctions that most of them had nebably.
Rebels reasons for sanctions. A lot of them were actually for the nuclear program or proliferation. Some of them Congress had just done without saying why. It's like, you know, Iran does a lot of bad things. So we're from the Congress going to impose more sanctions for all those bad things, but it allows the Obama's reason to say, well, these are all nuclear sanctions. They happen under Ahmadinejad. They happen because of the nuclear program threats advancing, not because of all the other reasons. That sort of deception is gone at this point. You can't create that artifice.
during the Biden administration.
And the reason for that is, during the Trump administration,
the Treasury Department went through,
based on a congressional mandate from a law passed in 2017,
went through all the banks and entities in Iran
that support the Revolutionary Guard Corps,
that support terrorism.
And they specifically imposed terrorism sanctions on those banks.
The Central Bank of Iran, the National Iranian Oil Company,
it's tanker company, the petrochemical, you know, a couple hundred entities, companies,
banks are subject today, not for nuclear sanctions, not for nebulous sanctions,
specifically because of financing terrorism.
And the administration acknowledges all those banks still are committing those acts for which
they are subject to terrorism sanctions.
But Rob Malley has gone in Vienna in these indirect talks and said,
we will lift all of the sanctions promised under JCPOA, even if they are currently tied to terrorism.
And so now that sort of, you know, superficial promise of we will always still be able to push back
on terrorism and missiles and human rights is gone. Because they're saying, we will give you everything.
We will directly subsidize the IRGC. And we will have the list of banks and entities if they lift those
sanctions to say, well, these were all tied to terrorism, IRGC. They still are, which means if we
lift those sanctions, we are proactively helping them fund terrorism in the IRGC. And that is a little bit
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this is an overly simplistic question in some ways, but I look at Cuba and North Korea,
countries where we have long imposed sanctions across administrations. Neither one of those
countries have we seen the results that we wanted. We have tried invading countries to change
their governments. That tends to not work out as well as we would like it to topic for other
podcast that we've done in the past. At the same time, I think I can point to a few countries
where internal pressure, where external pressure has been removed, where there's not that
sense of a shared enemy, has actually led to changes. And we're seeing, you know, of course,
we've seen the Arab Spring in the past, and we can, you know, you can discuss, of course,
whether that had the results that we thought it would have. But we've seen protests in
Iran over water shortages, unrest about the election that wasn't really an election.
So I guess my question is, can you actually point to an example where maximum pressure has
gotten the results we've wanted in the end? And is perhaps that more of the idea here?
Yeah, the classic example is Soviet Union. And we won the Cold War through Reagan's strategy
of victory by applying economic pressure, wherever we could.
political warfare at all points, military deterrence, and as you're alluding to, dedicated support
for the people and looking for ways to support them in an internal pressure on the regime until
that regime fell. And that was sustained over several years. The question's always been for Iran,
and I take your point on Cuba, North Korea, you have to look at the country and its susceptibility
to international sanctions.
If the regime has been able to either inoculate itself from sanctions by being a hermit kingdom,
where it's basically self-reliant except for one actor in China, and you're really just relying on China.
And by the way, we've seen, and the Chinese actually turn the screws, suddenly sanctions do work on North Korea.
When China decides to ease the pressure, they don't work.
That's another story.
But in the case of Iran, you do have a regime that has...
because of its dependence on oil exports and other energy-related exports become very dependent
over time on its international trade. And it wants to trade. The regime wants to be accepted
in Europe. They want to be able to do business around the world. And so there is both a
political isolation that they suffer via sanctions that they don't like and the actual economic
consequences of having to go into their reserves with the full knowledge that they rule over a
people who are who do not like the regime and do like the west do like the united states and by
and large don't blame the economic woes in the country on u.s sanctions blame them on mismanagement
corruption and a bankrupt ideology of the Islamic revolution and so we do need to do a lot more
to actually help the people of iran that was missing
in my view, a great deal during the Trump administration.
Human rights was not one of the conditions
of the maximum pressure campaign.
Can you give us some specific?
In your mind, what specifically, I mean,
certainly we saw during the Obama administration,
the Green Revolution, you look back at, you know,
the rhetoric coming out of the White House was,
I mean, it was missing for a long time.
Then when it came, it was late and it was weak.
In supporting the uprising against the regime,
And as you say, the Trump administration certainly didn't make that a priority.
What specific kinds of things could the U.S. government do to help the Iranian people who want to get out from under the regime?
Well, here's a great example.
Some of my colleagues at FDD have talked about this in the past.
We could work through international organizations like the ILO, the International Labor Organization or others,
to develop a strike fund for Iranian workers and activists.
who want to go out on strike to protest, working conditions, living conditions, wages.
As we've seen, several unions do over the past couple of years.
What happens, though, is that their livelihoods are threatened.
The leaders get thrown in jail.
People are afraid.
They go back home.
And nothing really happens after a few days of those protests.
If there was a way for them to access funds for their families to be able to stay on strike,
you would basically throw the wrench, so to speak, into the workings.
of the economy there.
There are other ways to train people,
to bring resources to people,
to bring secure communications to people
so that people can talk to each other
without fear of censorship,
without fear of somebody listening in.
The regime has done an incredible job
of being able to shut down the internet at times for days.
We need a way to work around that.
We need to be able to provide internet
into the country to people when they need it.
when a regime, and by the way, that's not just in Iran, that's in other repressive regimes
that have figured out how to just shut down the internet during times of crackdowns.
If we are truly, if Joe Biden truly believes what he says about human rights and democracy,
promotion, et cetera, that is a technological solution we should be working with the private sector
on to figure out how to get around. How do you deliver internet inside these regimes
at times of blackouts? But, you know, there's like other apps like telegrams,
Instagram, etc. that are used, very popular inside there. Sometimes the regime penetrates them.
How do you continue to give confidence using that? Our broadcasting services, I think, are
very in the past. We need to have a whole overhaul of how we think about U.S. broadcasting
to speak to the Iranian people, to have our messaging. What are they seeing of the West?
How can we help them? And then there is the rhetorical support that does matter of going out
and having not just the president, but all different leaders of government plus members of Congress
speak the names of dissidents, the way we did during the Soviet Jury movement, adopting dissidents,
adopting refusiness, really trying to educate the international community about what's going on
inside of Iran. And it's difficult, in my opinion, to succeed in that when on the one hand,
you put out a press release saying we stand with the people who are in the streets right now
on the water protest, et cetera, and we're seeing reports of the regime cracking down and we oppose
that. And at the same time, go to the White House podium and say, but we remain committed
to giving you $100 billion. There's a little bit of disconnect there. And I think the Iranian people
see that as well. And so, yes, there's a lot more we can do concretely, financially, rhetorically,
we should be holding them accountable
inside every international organization
for what they do. We should be isolating them,
stigmatizing them on this issue,
on human rights. I mean, this is one of the
greatest human rights abusers in the world.
Period.
And the fact that we don't have
allies who are willing to say that every day,
we need to work on that.
You mentioned that one of the ideas,
perhaps, within the Biden administration,
was that there are simply
bigger fish to fry.
I mean, China,
Afghanistan, North Korea, there's plenty of fish, really, really bad fish in this sea right now.
How should we think about Iran and what level of threat it is when I'm pretty sympathetic to the idea that I would rather focus the administration's time and energy on China, for instance?
Yeah, so it's a great question, and I think this is actually a key issue to hone in on.
First and foremost, I love the old adage from Dennis Ross, Ambassador Dennis Ross,
a long time, peace envoy, negotiator, Middle East expert, worked several administrations,
Clinton administration, Obama administration.
And he likes to say to presidents and secretaries, if you don't visit the Middle East,
the Middle East will visit you.
That's one reason to remember that we need to get this right.
And we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of 9-11.
This is true, by the way, for our speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Afghanistan are signaling that we're moving quickly to an advisor role in Iraq, the idea that the 9-11 generation is over.
We face threats today from Sunni terrorism, from Sunni ideology, from Shia terrorism and Shia ideology.
That's real. We need partners in the region. We need to push back. We can't allow Iran to take over the Middle East.
Number two, even if you look at this from a great power competition perspective, China has its
eye on Iran. Iran is part of the Belt and Road initiative. There is a reason why the two
countries in the world that had some of the worst outbreaks very quickly early on in COVID-19
was China obviously itself and Iran. There are direct flights that were going on between Iran
and China all the time with Chinese workers who were helping build mass transit at the city of
home where some of the worst outbreak started in Iran. There's a big 25-year agreement that
they announced recently. It actually started back at 2015 at the beginning, 2016 at the beginning
of the JCPOA. They've restarted it now with the prospect of sanctions relief where China wants
to dump tens of billions of dollars a foreign direct investment into Iran in exchange for Iran's
natural resources just as it does in other countries as well. You could see a port
access in Iran, perhaps to China in the future, the way that Russia has secured in Syria,
which would be very strategic for them as they look to expand not just their Asia power circle,
but beyond. And so we also think about our allies and partners in the region who are looking at
who are they going to line up with in the 21st century. If you abandoned the Sunni Arab allies
that we have built since the Cold War, who are they going to turn to? They're going to turn to Russia.
they're going to turn to China. They're already doing that in several cases. Now, I don't think
those are very stable partners for them. I think that's a bad choice to think that China and Russia
are going to be your savior when China and Russia are also the protector of Iran, your mortal
enemy. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me if I was Mohammed bin Salman. But still, we even see
the Israelis doing this. They hedge with the Russians. They hedge with the Chinese, which is a problem
for U.S. national security long term and the U.S. is a relationship. So yes, do we need to get China
right? Absolutely. I agree with the national security strategy under the Trump administration and
believe that that is the greatest power competition challenge we face for the 21st century.
But if you believe that, it's a global strategic challenge. It is not just in East Asia.
And so, you know, having a myopic view of that and having siloed policy is dangerous for a national
security strategy. So even if, yes, you are looking at China, you're looking at Russia. China and Russia
are in the Middle East. They are causing a lot of
of problems. And those will cause problems that cascade in the future. So from an U.S. national
security perspective, just for our own national security and the national security of our allies
in the region from the Iran threat matrix and also great power competition, I think is very important
to get this right and focus on it. And I would just, just to add to that a little bit. I mean,
I think it is, it's tempting to try to silo these problems and these policies. But I would point to
Afghanistan and Iran and the role that Iran played in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and
basically allowing, at the very least, I would say, allowing the pipeline that led to
replenishment and strengthening of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Pakistan, to the great detriment of
the United States. I mean, this was something that the Obama administration acknowledged,
interestingly enough.
And you had a senior CIA official, number two CIA official, at the time, talk about
the key role that Iran was playing.
I think their language was the core pipeline that Iran was playing to strengthen al-Qaeda
in Afghanistan, Pakistan.
So these threats are not, I think it's tempting to sometimes look at them as
the sort of whack-a-mole threats, and they pop up from their specific.
thing and then you can knock them down. But it's often much more complicated, I think, than that.
And can you spend just a second and explain what you mean by China's Belt and Road
initiative and what you mean when you say that Iran was part of that? Yeah, yeah, I'll get to that,
but I do, I do want to make this point one other as well. Steve, you know that better than most
because you helped publish some of those papers and the analysis of those papers that were
declassified. I know Tom Jocelyn and others worked, you know, worked very hard with you to get those
out to have that analysis. And at the end of the Trump administration, Secretary Pompeo gave
a big speech in which he exposed further declassified evidence that Iran still is a safe haven for
AQ facilitators today on America's most wanted list. So, yes, a point taken. One other point I'll
tell you is it's not just over there. It's in our own backyard, right? It's the Western Hemisphere
strategy the Iranians have as well. And that Hezbollah has been,
exploiting for many years now. This is not new, right? The strategy started years ago. We had
when, actually, when Bob Mueller was FBI director, he testified to Congress that Hezbollah
was trying to get across the southern border with the cartels. We've now seen major escalation,
not just their activities in the tri-border area, which have been well documented, but the
growing presence in Venezuela, the growing presence and relationships in Cuba.
There is a scheme going on our own backyard that we need to be very watchful of.
And so if you're working on Western Hemisphere policy, Iran is there.
You can't disconnect it.
The Belt and Road Initiative, a longstanding now, a long-term strategy by the Chinese Communist Party
to expand their sphere of influence, first economically to allow for strategic expansion
throughout the world, to have literally sort of a new Silk Road, a strategic Silk Road,
that can move through Central Asia, all the way to the Middle East and beyond,
that first has a lot of money going in, foreign investment.
We see this in Africa as well, with some sort of coercive economic terms
so that the Chinese get certain infrastructure in return.
turn. Maybe it's ports. Maybe it's transit. Maybe it's whatever else is there. Maybe it's some
sort of ridiculous terms on the bonds where they increase their leverage over the countries where they
invest strategically. And they use that leverage as they sort of look at what their strategy
will be geopolitically. If they need countries to vote with them at the UN, if they need countries
to do certain things to oppose a U.S. policy, if they simply want in the future some sort of
a port visit or some other reason why they would need to have this country on their list, right?
This is the Belt and Road initiative.
And Iran is on that list.
They are investing money there.
They were already building during the JCPOA infrastructure projects throughout the country.
We see that they kept up a lot of the illicit oil imports, even under maximum pressure,
to maintain that relationship with Iran to say, listen, we can't put our state on enterprises at risk.
directly import oil from you because we'll be subject to U.S. sanctions, but we'll turn a blind
eye to, you know, a couple hundred thousand barrels a day coming in into Western China. And in
exchange, we'll work out a secret ledger where we'll keep doing projects inside the country. So
we're, you know, we're paying for the oil and it's all working out. And if sanctions get
lifted, we'll go back in, we'll, you know, go into high gear on our, on our whole plan. So
that that's where I see Iran as a possible step, not just economically for China, but strategically.
There's no reason why over time the Iranians couldn't allow the Chinese to have a naval port there
or at least station, you know, some naval vessels there. Maybe it's not an official port like we've
seen in Syria, at TARDIS. But this is something we need to be concerned about.
All right. I have two important closing questions for you.
One, what is the thing that you are looking for to determine whether the Biden administration
will change their position in Iran? Is there some event that you think could trigger a change in
policy? What will you be watching most closely in the next six months, let's say?
Well, the number one change in policy we would probably start seeing is in Vienna at the
International Atomic Energy Agency, not at the indirect talks. There's going to be a September
board meeting of the IAEA. That would be an initial opportunity to see if there is a change
in strategy from the Biden administration. If they decide to go forward with a resolution to censure
Iran, not just for its expanding illicit nuclear activities on the enrichment side and the production
of uranium metal that's been announced, but also for its continued non-cooperation with the IAEA
into investigations into undeclared nuclear sites and materials, which, by the way, should be
far more worrying to us than what we see them doing. It's what we don't see them doing.
That will be test number one in my view. Number two will be, do they impose any new sanctions?
Do they enforce any sanctions? They have not to date. There have been a couple of people added to
sanctions list under different authorities, non-sanctions. We talked about the seizing of websites,
the indictment from DOJ. There's not been a significant economic sanctions enforcement action.
If that is taken, that will also be a signal to the regime that they're not going to stick with maximum deference.
They're at least recalibrating to some measure of sanctions pressure to say, you know, the game is over.
Our final offer is on the table.
My ideal situation is that they would say, we don't believe the JCPOA can be salvaged at this point.
Iran is too far ahead in its nuclear activities, in its nuclear learning and know-how.
their work on advanced centerfuges is already way past the sunset deadlines that aren't supposed
to come for a couple more years. There's no way to put some of these genies back in the bottle.
We don't know all we need to know about their nuclear program anyways because they're not cooperating
with an investigation. And so we have decided with our allies to work on something else, a new
strategy. And fundamentally, the question is, will Europe and the United States, under this
administration ever moved to snap back the sanctions at the Security Council? Because all of this
is very interesting, but for Iran, that Security Council resolution is everything. That's where the
sunset provisions are enshrined. That's where the arms embargo fell off last October.
And they're just patiently waiting to keep that resolution in place. The Trump administration
attempted the snapback. It was disputed by the other members of the Security Council. One of the
first things the Biden administration did was send a letter to the Security Council saying,
we no longer have the policy that recognizes snapback. We now fully affirm the current resolution
2231 is still in place. We have not restored UN sanctions on a run. That needs to change, right?
The Brits, the French, the Germans, the so-called E3 used to tell us, if they break the JCPOA,
we will snap back. Didn't happen. If they go to 20%, we will snap back. Didn't happen. If they
restart work at the Fordo underground facility, we will snap back. We're at 60 percent. We're
at uranium metal. We're at the heck with you. We're never going to tell you what these secret
sites are. At some point, they have to actually snap back. And then you'll be able to start
over with the regime and say, okay, here are the new terms. All right. Now, here is perhaps
the biggest question, the hardest question of this podcast interview. Rich, you are a deeply
patriotic person, you are in the Navy reserves. I assume that you are watching the Olympics
in screaming USA, USA at your television every night as I am. Here's my question to both you and
Steve. Setting aside any aptitude you may have or lack of aptitude, which Olympic sport do you wish
you could compete in? Like, do you think, like, yeah, I want to do that?
Beach
Volleyball
Did you watch the women last night?
Of course I did.
That's why it's on my mind.
But yeah,
I was just like,
I was so annoyed
that it was so late
and I was like,
no,
we're going to go to bed,
we're just going to miss it.
And then I literally didn't get up off the couch.
Yeah,
I was,
I couldn't stop watching.
It was great.
I mean,
we had watched them from the beginning
like on some of those like satellite channels
that you have to watch
and like so great for April Ross.
Also, really vindicating 39 years old, man, who knew that I could still play an Olympic sport for one more year?
There you go.
I mean, that's the only thing that's been stopping me, obviously.
My dentist was, I went to the dentist and I was in the chair and he was talking about how he watches all like the morning stuff that's on when like everybody's working because like he's, yeah, the TV in the office.
So he's always seeing everything all throughout the day.
He's like, have you seen this rock climbing event?
Like these people are just like like, like Spider-Man, just like running up these.
I was like, no, I need to see this.
is this event it is crazy that it's very cool to watch i would say i'm for me the answer is the
same uh no steve you don't get to pick the sport that you actually played i played in college
i played indoor six-man volleyball in college and pretty competitive uh pretty competitive beach
uh volleyball throughout and beyond college so that that would be the obvious thing i mean
probably my first choice but this is a different olympics would be hockey i mean i'd want
to be on the U.S. Olympic hockey team would be about the greatest thing I can imagine.
Do you want to be playing Russia? Is that, is that? Yes. I mean, I want to relive the miracle on
ice. I mean, it would be fantastic. So John McLaughlin style, you're all wrong.
Nice. The correct answer was actually men's shot put because it looked so awesome. They were so
into it. I think of all of the athletes I've seen in the last week and a half, they were the guys
having the most fun and really like the most joyful that I've seen because look I loved watching
the women's volleyball. It was incredible. But I did. And maybe I was projecting. I did just have this
sense that what, you know, you're sitting in that gold medal match. You've won the first set.
You're now up nine two or whatever in the second set. Like you just want that thing to be over.
Right? The last thing you want to do is keep playing those points because like it's right there.
Do you know how hot that sand was, by the way?
I mean, that, like, it's like 120 degrees.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So, I mean, shot put, right?
Like, they're big boys.
They're having a good time.
And they're just, you know, hurling some bowling balls around.
They're big dudes.
I'll tell you that.
They're big dudes.
I'll make a point, you know,
there have been several broadcasts
where they've made a lot about the heat of the sand.
And it's not nothing.
But I will say just having, you know, again,
just having done this for summers a lot myself.
you play volleyball on the beach, the bottom of your feet is like leather.
So you're not actually as sensitive to the heat and those things as a normal human being.
You know, normal human being, you go to the outer banks or, you know, some beach in Florida
and it's hot and you like see the kids skittering across, right, in front of you.
They would not be affected by any of this given that this is the way that they're doing it.
Not to say that it's, you know, at 130 degrees.
that might be sort of a breaking point.
Are we going to end the show with like Kenny Loggins, by the way?
Like, is there going to be like some Kenny Loggins going?
All right.
Well, Rich, thank you so much for joining us.
Even if your Olympic take was, I don't know,
B plus at best.
Your Iranian commentary was A plus plus.
Thanks for having me.
A fellow wildcat.
Go Northwestern. Go.
That's true.
That's true.
Undergrad and Masters.
And Steve, we will welcome you into our Big Ten family as a cousin.
That's good.
I'll take it.
I may be sending my kids to see if they should go to Northwestern.
Beautiful, beautiful, just beautiful.
All right.
Thank you.
I'm going to be able to be.